This isn’t just a photo. It’s a moment in time that captures the simple, the mundane, the ordinary, woven together into one extraordinary, imperfect life.

Even the word waitpool carries a strange weight—like being held in suspension, a not-here, not-there kind of place. A place where you’re told you’re worthy but not enough to be chosen. Yet.

This is how I spent my afternoon, lost in the gentle scratch of colored pencils, watching hearts and patterns emerge on paper.

The waiting game is not one I play well.

You—the girl I was—

remind me

to listen

to the whispers

of my heart.

Have you ever had an experience like this with someone deeply spiritual in the garb of an osteopath?

Picked up lunch today from a Nepalese place we like and gave them this handpainted token of appreciation. Their beaming eyes and smiles will stay with me awhile.

This wasn’t a promotional conversation. It was a real one. About presence. Kindness. And making something that outlives the metrics.

My essays are not “content.”

It’s hard to build resilience when it constantly feels like you’re under attack.

My antidote to everything that is wrong in this world.

This Friday, my body hit pause before I could.

When it's easier to share things with quasi-friends on the internet than real friends in life.

A submission and a rejection

For two decades, I wrote other people’s stories. I built a career on telling them well. And then I gave it all up to be a full-time homemaker, slowly silencing my own voice.

It’s taken years to step back into it. To trust that my words might mean something outside of my own Substack page.

So yes—this validation means more than I can express.

Keep being kind.

Kindness is not a transaction. It does not hinge on shared beliefs, affiliations, or opinions. It is a gesture. A recognition. A quiet insistence that you matter.